I have successfully installed OpenACS on current Debian stable and old-stable.
Out-of-the-box installation works properly, given, as stated by Gustaf, that postgresql version must be 8.x (8.4 in my situation). Database API browser however will fail in showing you the code of the procedures, and xotcl API browser won't work properly until you install graphviz, which is not in the dependencies.
In production environment, I found myself more comfortable in moving all openacs tree to the traditional /var/lib/aolserver instead of /usr/share, like in Debian. This to avoid all the linkings in /etc and other folders Debian does to enforce its standards and also to allow different names and instances for the installation, which otherwise will default to only one instance (and db) called 'openacs'.
Once in production, I had to face some issue related to "advanced" features of openacs like ns_proxy, used to call exec without memory loss in the server, which was not installed and configured properly and which also had to be tweaked because of a well known problem of segmentation fault in the code, not yet solved in that version.
Also init.d startup scripts, which I prefer to use in Debian, had to be debugged to work.
All this said, OpenAcs is surely not the easiest piece of software to package, especially if you are the kind who wants to click once and play forever. More important, naviserver is not packaged yet, and some well known problems with aolserver are still unhandled in packaged versions. Was it easier to install OpenAcs like this? Probably yes, but for the best production experience you'd be better off bumping your head on manual or not distribution aware ways to install at least aolserver/naviserver and openacs. You would end up fiddling with them anyway, and with new 5.8 release out now you will get the freshest software.
Ciao
Antonio
